King's College London

About Us

The Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry is world-renowned for its progressive research in the field of child and adolescent mental health.

In 2025, the Department will be moving to the newly built Pears Maudsley Centre for Children and Young People (PMC). The PMC has been developed by the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People – a partnership between King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Maudsley Charity. The Centre’s aim is to reduce the rate and impact of child mental health through world-leading research and its speedy translation into clinical care. This will be achieved through the co-location of clinical and academic teams to ensure that clinically relevant research is translated into novel preventions and treatments to benefit young people.

The PMC is the only facility in Europe with a primary focus on the  mental health of young people and will have a state-of-the-art clinical research facility with cutting-edge equipment including a novel fNIRS imaging device and be the perfect environment for translational research for young people.

King’s College London is deeply committed to embedding good culture, equality and diversity practice into all activities so that the University is an inclusive, welcoming and inspiring place to work and study. We welcome applications from those with characteristics who are under-represented at senior levels within the University.

About the Role

This is an exciting opportunity for a senior research associate to work on establishing fNIRS research at the IoPPN within the PMC/CAP as well as in other departments. The Researcher will be based in KCL, London and work closely with Prof Rubia but will be assisting several teams at PMC/IoPPN/KCL that will use fNIRS technology.

The aim of the post-holder is to provide his/her expertise in fNIRS imaging acquisition, analysis and interpretation to any teams at PMC and IoPPN/KCL that will use this technology.

The post-holder will be therefore working on different projects across different psychiatric and neurological disorders, as needed. He/she will be teaching and/or assisting researchers in fNIRS imaging acquisition, data analysis and interpretation and will be involved both in grant applications and paper writing. They will have ample experience in fNIRS technology, both in the technical as well as interpretational aspects. They will be experts of fNIRS technology through a PHD and post-doctoral experience and ideally have some experience of multimodal neuroimaging.

The candidate will be open to work on different research areas and in a range of pediatric and adult mental health disorders.

The candidate will aid IOPPN/KCL in establishing fNIRS technology for exciting cutting-edge projects of either unimodal or multimodal neuroimaging and projects that combine fNIRS with neuromodulation.

You will be offered a full time (35 hours per week) fixed term contract until March 2027.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria 

1. PhD in Neuroscience, Neuroimaging, Neuropsychology, Experimental Psychology, Psychiatry, or related fields.
2. Senior-level experience with fNIRS technology, including fNIRS data acquisition, data analysis, data interpretation and fNIRS paper writing skills
3. Open to work in different projects on different disorders of mental health
4. Extensive experience with data collection, storage and statistical analyses
5. Excellent paper writing skills and excellent presentation skills
6. Excellent communication skills, oral and written
7. Excellent interpersonal skills and able to establish and maintain good channels of communication with participants, research team 
8. Ability to work independently as well as part of a team and under supervision, assessing priorities and managing workload effectively 

Desirable criteria

1. PHD in NIRS related topic
2. Experience of applying NIRS to children
3. Experience of multimodal imaging with NIRS
4. Prior grant writing skills

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the next page after you click “Apply Now”. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further Information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’  pages.

Interviews are due to be held on January 2025

We are able to offer sponsorship for candidates who do not currently possess the right to work in the UK.